Chapter 68: The Witch of Truth
The Pacific Ocean.
Where the island that had once carried a century of ambition had stood, there was now only a patch of sea, completely flattened by the torrent of energy. The aftershocks of the storm subsided, and the black lightning receded into the void.
However, a deep and immense presence was now coalescing and expanding within that void. Its edges were blurred, merging with the deep sea and the somber sky.
To step inside was to first feel the cold reconstruction of logic.
The sky was not a sky, but countless rotating shards of glass. As they spun, each shard reflected a different image: a blood-stained evidence bag, a crooked bow tie, scattered pills, cold iron bars.
And faces. The terror of being pushed down the stairs over a petty argument. The final struggle of being stabbed in the throat for disliking a haircut. Countless faces, twisted by fear, lies, or the most insignificant of grudges.
The ground was paved with innumerable case files, yellowed and scattered, which crunched like dead leaves underfoot. The words on the files flickered in and out of view, records of countless unsolved mysteries, cold autopsy reports, and contradictory testimonies. There were also extensive records of murder motives, seemingly absurd yet possessing a complete chain of logic: for a limited-edition piece of cake, for the way someone walked, for a careless glance…
A set of rusty scales hung high in the air, endlessly performing a cold, precise weighing of truth against crime. It no longer sought balance, but ruthlessly discarded the lighter side, declaring another trivial "sin" confirmed.
In the distance, a dilapidated detective agency and a grim courtroom could be seen, fused together in a grotesque union. The silhouette of Sherlock Holmes was stretched and distorted on the mottled walls, ultimately becoming a giant, puppet-like shadow that controlled smaller Familiars with eyeglasses. These Familiars moved about dispassionately, marking the ground with the chalk outlines of human figures that continuously appeared. They weaved between the case files and glass shards, and the air was thick with the musty smell of old paper and the sharp scent of formaldehyde. There was also the faint, unique smell of stale black tea, lemon pie, and a specific brand of cleaning solution—a common method for concealing the scent of blood.
At the absolute center of this twisted domain hung a colossal silhouette, one that could not be measured by common sense. Its main body was the silhouette of a child in a torn, gothic detective dress, but it was being torn apart and covered by countless conflicting and intertwined images.
Shards of a magnifying glass, symbolizing "deduction," formed its empty face, reflecting a truth that could not be pieced together, as well as the countless moments of death sparked by trivial matters.
Pages from law books, symbolizing the "law," formed its tattered robes, stained with the blood of criminals, but also mixed with the blood of victims who were "justly" deprived of their lives for absurd reasons.
Chains of "evidence" danced silently around it, at times locking onto a great evil, at others coiling around a seemingly innocent, everyday object that was once the key piece of evidence or the murder weapon in a forgotten case.
The magical fluctuations it emitted carried the will of "finality." It brought all "truths"—great and small, good and evil, no matter how absurd the motive—under its jurisdiction.
This was what the boy who sought the one and only truth had become, after exhausting all hope and all despair. A being whose arrival would always expose a truth, and would always… be accompanied by death.
A Witch.
…
In the deepest part of the Labyrinth, there was a mirror cage. Composed of countless facets, it was completely isolated from the other areas. Within this cage, a consciousness was undergoing an unspeakable torture.
Karasuma Renya.
He was no longer the mastermind who sat in his control room, looking down on the world. He found himself naked, his body ancient and ugly, exposed under the reflection of infinite mirrors. Every wrinkle, every liver spot, was magnified and displayed in perfect clarity. For a being who had spent his life pursuing eternal youth and was consumed by narcissism, this alone was a form of torture.
But it was only the beginning.
The cage was not static. The mirrors rotated, moved closer, and receded. They began to reflect more than just his appearance.
One mirror lit up, showing an early APTX experiment. A failed test subject twisted in agony from the drug before dissolving, letting out a horrific scream. The next second, that same pain shot through Karasuma Renya's entire body. His bones felt like they were melting, his organs burning.
Another mirror showed the Miyano couple—Atsushi and Elena. They were the researchers he had once placed great hope in. The mirror showed their final moments in the "accidental" fire he had arranged. He could feel his lungs filling with thick smoke, his skin curling and carbonizing in the intense heat.
The mirrors cycled through the faces of countless "traitors" and "obstacles" the Organization had eliminated. The faces of those Gin had coldly executed, the figures who had been turned to ash in explosions… every moment of death became an icy scalpel, repeatedly slicing at Karasuma Renya's nerves. He could feel the cold of a bullet piercing his skull, the agony of his limbs being torn apart by a bomb.
"No… stop… I am…" He tried to scream, to argue, to declare that he was the master of the shadow world. But the mirrors ignored his will.
They began to show the recent deaths of his core agents in the double Witch Labyrinth. Vodka's despair and unwillingness as he dissolved in cheap whiskey. Gin's shock and rage as he was turned to ash. The death scenes in the mirrors, mixed with the vicarious pain of countless absurd murders, coalesced into a viscous, dark substance that wrapped around his limbs. A deep chill and sense of hopelessness threatened to drag him into that eternal void.
"Enough! ENOUGH!!!" Karasuma Renya pounded on the mirror surfaces, but they were indestructible, serving only to reflect his own pathetic state—a sniveling, weeping wreck.
And the mental torment was far from over.
The mirrors began to show the entirety of what he considered his greatest achievement: the "Purge." He saw how he had used Kyubey's information, how he had treated Magical Girls as tools, how he had incited hatred and sparked the witch hunts. But this time, the perspective was not his own lofty, godlike view. He was forced to experience it all from the perspective of those he had deemed "baggage" and "sacrifices."
He felt the terror of the young girl being dragged from her home, crying for help. He experienced the heart-rending betrayal and despair of the Magical Girl whose family was murdered and home was burned.
Then, the mirrors finally settled, reflecting his own image. The ancient demon, sitting in his control room, watching it all with cold indifference, even a hint of a smile.
"No… that's not me… Everything I did… it was for humanity…" he tried to argue, his voice trembling with fear and self-doubt.
[Humanity?] a cold voice echoed abruptly within the mirror cage. It held no emotion, as if reading from an autopsy report. [Your actions have nothing to do with the "humanity" you speak of.]
[Motive: An extreme fear of your own decay, and a pathological desire for absolute control.]
[Result: Accelerated the destruction of civilization and created endless despair.]
[Conclusion: Based on the above facts, the individual "Karasuma Renya" is judged to be…]
In the mirrors, his proud, century-long plan was displayed—his supposedly seamless arrangements, his confidence in his own control. An invisible hand then gently wiped it all away, as indisputably as a detective revealing the truth at the end of a case.
All his glory, all his ambition, all his hubris… in the face of this cold "conclusion," it all seemed so laughable, so… meaningless.
[…of no value.]
The final two words fell, a definitive judgment. A blow more terrible than any torture descended upon him. When a madman who places his own will above all else and proclaims himself a god has the very foundation of his existence—his absolute faith in his own intellect and control—utterly and coldly negated, his mental world faces its true apocalypse.
"Ah… AAAAAAAAHHHHHHH—!!!"
Karasuma Renya shrieked, a sound no longer human, but the wail of a soul in complete collapse. He no longer felt physical pain, for the shattering of his mind far surpassed anything his body could endure. The reflection in the mirror, the once-invincible mastermind, began to rapidly shrivel, twist, and dissipate. He was not destroyed by an external force. He was… self-negating, self-disintegrating.
His soul, in the face of this ultimate, "true" judgment, could no longer maintain its own existence. It evaporated completely.
In the end, the mirror cage was left with nothing but an empty void. Not even dust remained.
The colossal silhouette floating at the center of the Labyrinth showed no emotional response. The judgment was complete.
However, the Witch Labyrinth that was once Conan did not stop expanding. It began to move slowly in one direction.
Its target: the closest landmass to the island… the continent of North America.